Free Birthday Crap

With the Big Four-Three just a week way, my Yahoo! inbox is slowly but surely being inundated with the usual fare of free birthday offers and other crap.

This year, however, I’ve noticed that some companies are being a lot less generous with their offerings.

Take Best Buy’s RewardZone of which I’m a member. It’s that program that rewards you with points whenever you make a purchase either online or in-store. Their birthday gift to me was an amazing quadruple Points on my next purchase. How freaking big of the company that charges ridiculous amounts for their accessories because they make the highest profit margin off of them (hint: do NOT buy accessories from them).

And if you’re curious, you get 1 Point for every $1 you spend and it takes 250 Points to earn $5. That said, I would have to buy something priced at least $63 to earn that cool $5 certificate with my quadruple Points bonus. Sure, it’s not like I’m spending the whole $250 to earn the same amount but I seem to recall that members used to get a $10 certificate for their birthday. This time, I’m spending money to get money.

Screw you, Best Buy.

Then there’s my Sport Chalet’s Action Pass membership which, once upon a time, would score me (if my mind isn’t failing me in my old[er] age) a $10 certificate for my birthday. What did I get this year?

A discount of $15 off a purchase of $75 or more. So again, I’m spending over $60 to earn the benefit. This would have all been fine and well if I were still making a decent paycheck but I haven’t had one of those since I was…on unemployment. But honestly, this one may get used because I frequent that store much more than Best Buy and with Anthony’s birthday around the corner, it could come in handy should we decide to go 50/50 on a bike with Ann’s folks.

There was some actual free birthday stuff in my inbox lately, courtesy of Del Taco:

Looks pretty good, no? Yeah. I think it does, but the Haunted Mansion font should only be used for 999 Happy Haunts living in ghostly retreats. The thing is that me and shakes don’t play well anymore. Something about the over 500 empty calories and my lactose intolerance that makes me shy away from them and believe me, you don’t want to be around if I do have one. While I appreciate the offer I’m pretty sure I’ll pass on it. At least it’s not that repulsive bacon shake that Jack in the Box is serving up:

Maybe it’s because I’m no longer a behemoth of a guy anymore, but I don’t quite get this fascination with bacon. I can safely say that fat people must love stuff like this.

Then there was this offer from Ruby’s, an overpriced kitschy place that I haven’t gone to in at least 2 years:

For reasons already listed under the Del Taco offer, this one probably won’t get used, either. And personally, I prefer Johnny Rockets.

Then today, I got one that I might just have to take advantage of: IHOP’s Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity plate.

Pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon not blended inside a shake. I’m pretty sure this one’s a winner, even if I don’t eat the sausage (which I’m sure others at the table will have no problem taking).

So those are all of the free and mostly useless birthday craps that retailers and fine dining establishments have sent to me so far. I just hope that the 12-headed jackass doesn’t sing Happy Birthday to me as they bring me my plate.